Video: Soldiers find nearly 300 acres of pot in Baja

A Mexican military helicopter hovered Thursday over a 300-acre marijuana field found outside Ensenada.

A Mexican military helicopter hovered Thursday over a 300-acre marijuana field found outside Ensenada. (/ AFN)

Mexican military authorities announced on Thursday that they have set a new record with the discovery of nearly 300 acres of marijuana plants--enough to cover 225 football fields--south of Ensenada near the community of El Rosario.

Soldiers on land patrol identified the plants Tuesday off the Transpeninsular Highway about 90 miles south of San Quintin, according to Gen. Alfonso Duarte Mugica of the Second Military Region, who spoke with a group of reporters taken to the scene.

Located about 1.2 miles from the highway, the plants were covered with a shade cloth that is commonly used in the region to protect plants from the sun and thus were difficult to detect from the air, Duarte said. The plants were of varying size, rising to as more than seven feet, and were watered through an irrigation system supplied by two wells. The largest plants were on the verge of being ready for cultivation, he said.

Duarte estimated that about 60 people were working in the fields, but “seeing military personnel, they fled.”

He said that he did not know what criminal group was behind the operation. He said the plants would be burned.